AP U.S. History p. 701-707

1. AP U.S. Historyp. 701-707 World War I

2. Workers in Wartime • Congress imposed a rule that made any unemployed man available to enter the war and also discouraged strikes. • The National War Labor Board, headed by former president William H. Taft, settled any possible labor difficulties that might hamper the war efforts. • Fortunately, Samuel Gompers’ of the American Federation of Labor (AF of L), which represented skilled laborers, loyally supported the war, and by war’s end, its membership more than doubled to over 3 million. • Yet, there were still labor problems, as price inflation threatened to eclipse wage gains, and over 6,000 strikes broke out during the war, the greatest occurring in 1919, when 250,000 steelworkers walked off the job. • In that strike, the steel owners brought in 30,000 African-Americans to break the strike, and in the end, the strike collapsed, hurting the labor cause for more than a decade. • During the war, African Americans immigrated to the North to find more jobs. But the appearance of blacks in formerly all-white towns sparked violence in cities such as Chicago and St. Louis.

4. Suffering Until Suffrage • Women also found more opportunities in the workplace, since the men were gone to war. • The war split the women’s suffrage movement. Many progressive women suffragists were also pacifists and therefore against the war. Most women supported the war and concluded they must help in the war if they want to help shape the peace (get the vote). • Their help gained support for women’s suffrage, which was finally achieved with the 19th Amendment, passed in 1920. • Although a Women’s Bureau did appear after the war to protect female workers, most women gave up their jobs at war’s end, and Congress even affirmed its support of women in their traditional roles in the home with the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act of 1921, which federally financed instruction in maternal and infant health care.

5. Forging a War Economy • Mobilization relied more on passion and emotion than laws. Most wartime agencies relied on voluntary compliance rather than laws. • Herbert Hoover was chosen to head the Food Administration, since he had organized a hugely successful voluntary food drive for the people of Belgium. • He spurned ration cards in favor of voluntary “Meatless Tuesdays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays,” suing posters, billboards, and other media to whip up a patriotic spirit which encouraged people to voluntarily sacrifice some of their own goods for the war. • After all, America had to feed itself and its European allies.

6. Hoover’s voluntary approach worked beautifully, as citizens grew gardens on street corners to help the farmers, people observed “heatless Mondays,” “lightless nights,” and “gasless Sundays” in accordance with the Fuel Administration, and the farmers increased food production by 25%.

7. The wave of self-sacrifice also sped up the drive against alcohol, culminating with the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale, distribution, or consumption of alcohol. Money was raised through the sale of war bonds, four great Liberty Loan drives, and increased taxes. Still, the government did sometimes flex its power, such as when it took over the railroads in 1917.

8. Making Plowboys into Doughboys • European Allies finally confessed to the U.S. that not only were they running out of money to pay for their loans from America, but also that they were running out of men, and that America would have to raise and train an army to send over to Europe, or the Allies would collapse. • This could only be solved with a draft, which Wilson opposed but finally supported as a disagreeable but temporary necessity. • The draft bill ran into heated opposition in Congress but was grudgingly passed. • Unlike earlier wars, there was no way for one to buy one’s way out of being drafted. • Luckily, patriotic men and women lined up on draft day, disproving ominous predictions of bloodshed by the opposition of the draft. • Within a few months, the army had grown to 4 million men and women. • African-Americans were allowed in the army, but they were usually assigned to non-combat duty; also, training was so rushed that many troops didn’t know how to even use their rifles, much less bayonets, but they were sent to Europe anyway.